Camera grip – hold your camera correctly

Improving your camera grip is an important part of developing your skills. [Image taken from the Joe McNally video below].

Your camera grip is a critical skill.

Do it wrong and you’ll have problems getting a sharp image in many situations. You may even give yourself bad posture and back pain. Learning to have a good camera grip will help develop your skills in many ways.

Camera grip and overall stance

The way you grip your camera works as part of your overall stance. You can get the grip perfect, but with a poor stance it will ruin the impact of a good camera grip. In Simple tips for a good photography stance I set out a detailed plan for a good stance. It will be worth reading that before you see the videos below.

Joe McNally – Da Grip

In this video Joe shows us how to properly hold the camera. He apologises for how this best suits a left-eyed shooter. However, the technique can apply to both left and right eye shots. So don’t be put off. Watch to the end. Joe makes many of the points I do in Simple tips for a good photography stance and this article. He shows you how to properly grip your camera. He also demonstrates how to control it from this grip too.

Sharpness and camera grip are close friends

When teaching I have often found that poor stance and grip go together. They result in soft shots and poor quality images. I try to help people to be more deliberate and use relaxed but firm control. Then, if they hold a good stance and a good grip the sharpness and image framing seem to come together.

In the next short video Gavin Hoey goes through his method for a camera grip. It is very similar to Joes grip and my camera grip too. Everyone has quirks and slightly different ways to do it. The important thing is to follow the basic plan and practice until your shots are sharp and controlled. Then you will see the benefit of good stance and camera grip.

Gavin spends time on some other aspects of sharpness too. This nicely shows how all these methods come together. Great stance, camera grip and control of your camera will develop your skills in leaps and bounds. For more on improving your sharpness check out this article :: The Zen of sharpness – 12 easy ways to improve.

Damon is a writer-photographer and editor of this site. He has run some major websites, a computing department and a digital image library. He started out as a trained teacher and now runs training for digital photogs.See also: Editors ‘Bio’. By Damon Guy see his profile on Google+.